PESSIMISM AND POSITIVE SCIENCE. 215 



and however great the temptation at times to abandon 

 it, the positive point of view is that of evolution and 

 materialism. It is that of Darwin in his Origin of Species, 

 whose great law of Natural Selection, inductively 

 gathered, and deductively applied to the explanation of 

 vast classes of facts, and many inferior empirical laws in 

 the organic world, is as splendid a result of the positive 

 method in the domain of biology, as the Newtonian law 

 of gravitation in the sphere of physical science. And 

 the whole immense philosophy of evolution, in the hands 

 of Herbert Spencer, is nothing more than an attempt to 

 solve, by positive, natural, scientific, and phenomenal 

 causes, the old problems of the creation of the universe 

 and all living things within it, man included, together 

 with the origin of language, thought, morality, religion, 

 and all else which distinguishes man problems which 

 had so often been previously attempted by the theologian 

 and metaphysician, by occult, fictitious, supernatural, or 

 unintelligible causes. 



4. The rise of this positive spirit and way of 

 viewing the universe, three centuries ago, was in great 

 measure due to a reaction from the barren and wearisome 

 scholastic metaphysics, in alliance with a futile physics 

 which rested on metaphysical hypotheses instead of 

 experiment; and the general prevalence of this spirit 

 at the present day is owing to the grand scientific 

 discoveries and brilliant results in the sphere of practical 

 invention which have followed in the wake of its adop- 

 tion. To these last chiefly, but also, it must be allowed, 

 to a widespread conviction that metaphysics is still as 

 empty as in the days of scholasticism, that the abstrac- 

 tions of Hegelian metaphysics and the elaborate futilities 

 of Duns Scotus and Aquinas are still much on a par. 

 The notion is more and more commonly accepted by the 



